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About The Walrus

The Walrus was founded in 2003. As a registered charity, we publish independent, fact-based journalism in The Walrus and at thewalrus.ca; we produce national, ideas-focused events, including our flagship series The Walrus Talks; and we train emerging professionals in publishing and non-profit management. The Walrus is invested in the idea that a healthy society relies on informed citizens.

The Walrus publishes content nearly every day on thewalrus.ca and ten times a year in print. Our editorial priorities include politics and world affairs, health and science, society, the environment, law and justice, Indigenous issues, business and economics, the arts (including music, dance, film and television, literature, and fiction and poetry), and Canada’s place in the world.

Based in Toronto, The Walrus currently has a full-time editorial staff of fifteen, and we work with writers and artists across Canada and the world. Our masthead can be found here.

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The Walrus is operated by the charitable, non-profit Walrus Foundation, which is overseen by a board of directors, with the support of a national advisory committee and an educational review committee. The foundation’s revenue comes from multiple sources, including advertising sales, sponsorships, circulation, donations, government grants, and events. More than 1,500 donors and sponsors supported The Walrus in 2017.

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The Walrus is committed to reporting that is fair, accurate, complete, transparent, and independent.

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Stories that appear in The Walrus and thewalrus.ca are fact-checked. Our fact-checkers verify everything from broad claims made by authors to small details, such as dates and the spelling of names. Fact-checking records at The Walrus are archived in storage once a story is published.

The Walrus counts on its writers to make independent evaluations of difficult topics. The best journalism—no matter how descriptive, opinion driven, or narrative driven—is based on facts, and those facts should be clearly presented in the story. The Walrus is committed to ensuring the validity of an argument and finding balance between various perspectives on any given issue, while keeping in mind the reliability and motivations of individual sources.

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As soon as The Walrus is made aware of an error, fact-checkers will review the statement in question. Any needed corrections will be noted online at the bottom of the article—and in the next print issue, if the error originally appeared in print. The correction will reference the original error and supply the correct information and the date.
If you notice an error in something published by The Walrus, please send us a message at web@thewalrus.ca with the subject line “Correction.”

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Contributors or writers are contractually obligated to disclose practices that may deviate from the ethics policy of The Walrus to our editorial team.

Editorial Standards
The Walrus maintains a style guide, which is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect current conversations about culture and terminology.

For any situation not covered by this policy, we refer to the Ethics Guidelines of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Diversity Statement

Inclusiveness is at the heart of thinking and acting as journalists—and supports the educational mandate of The Walrus. Race, class, generation, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and geography all affect point of view. The Walrus believes that reflecting societal differences in reporting leads to better, more nuanced stories and a better-informed community.

The Walrus is committed to employment equity and diversity.

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Photograph by Harley Rustad Field of monuments to mountaineers who died on Everest. Photographed in March 2013.

Twice this year, Nepal’s mountaineering and trekking industry has been shaken by a major deadly event in its mountains. Last month, at least forty-three trekkers (including four Canadians) and Nepali guides and porters died as a storm hit the Annapurna range, northwest of Kathmandu. The majority of the bodies were found buried in snow near the Thorung La—a 5,416-metre pass that bisects the two-to-three-week Annapurna Circuit.

The unseasonal weather was caused by Cyclone Hudhud, which made landfall in eastern India days before lashing the Himalayas, as many storms do, with rain and snow. Those who were crossing the pass speak of a white-out blizzard that forced dozens to take refuge in a small stone building near the prayer flags that mark the trek’s highest point. As the storm raged, many felt their only option was to try to descend toward the town of Muktinath on the other side of the pass.

Some people were caught out in the storm; others died in avalanches. The Nepali military rescued hundreds of trekkers from the area in the following days.

In the weeks since, the government of Nepal has called for the installation of high-altitude weather alert stations; for more shelters; for mandatory guides and GPS devices; and for a more robust system of permits and checkpoints—regulations and technologies that will only exacerbate a false sense of security.

The Annapurna Circuit is an easy mountaineering experience. Around 100,000 foreigners trek in the Annapurna Conservation Area each year, three times more than on the more acclaimed route to Everest Base Camp. Both are physical challenges without doubt, hiking for weeks at high altitude, but they are easy nonetheless.

Those who try to summit Everest pay around $60,000 each—a cost that includes a deep support network of guides, porters, cooks, and equipment. But the vast majority of visitors to Nepal who want to see the Himalayas up close do so with little equipment, preparation, or high-altitude experience, for as little as $20 per day. You don’t need a tent, a camp stove, or a sleeping bag; not even food for that matter. Every couple of hours’ walk are teahouses—cozy places to sleep, have a fry-up breakfast, grab a quick bowl of noodles and chai for lunch, and a full dinner of spaghetti, beer, and apple pie—even at 4,450 metres. There is little need for compass or map as the paths are well trodden and clear. And every year, trekkers begin the Annapurna Circuit higher, and therefore acclimatize less, as road construction pushes the trailhead further up the valley.

It is dangerous mountain luxury.

Technology and innovation have always, and will always, be a part of athletics—inventing, designing, and testing new ways to pull the highest points within reach. In the mountains, employing rope, crampons, and ice axes as tools is one thing, but installing aluminium ladders to moderate technical points and ferry ever more paying customers to the peaks is quite another. For many, Everest is a towering example of all that is wrong with mountaineering: technology and services being used not as aids but as crutches.

In the six decades since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary stood on the roof of the world, countless routes have been made less challenging and peaks more achievable for those who do not belong on the slopes. In May 2012, Shriya Shah-Klorfine, a Canadian with little mountaineering experience, reportedly ignored her Nepali guide’s insistence to descend, slowly continued to Everest’s 8,848-metre summit, and then died after exhausting her oxygen tanks on the way down. But the same factors that propel mountaineers into costly decision-making in the “death zone” appear in similar form along Nepal’s spider web of highly accessible trekking routes.

Modern mountaineers often rely on the ladder, the guide, the GPS device, or the comforts of a well-stocked teahouse—and don’t know what to do when they fail. Even when storms begin to swirl, we feel invincible. We want mountain vistas without needing to know how to read topographical maps or weather patterns, or basic high-altitude rescue techniques. We no longer want to climb, we merely want to ascend. Higher. Faster. Easier.

After a brief closure, the Annapurna Circuit has reopened, with trekkers again slowly trudging up and over the Thorung La—trying to tick off a major Himalayan trek before the autumn season turns too cold. They are sleeping and eating in teahouses, buying souvenirs, and employing guides and porters—bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nepal’s remote communities.

Mountaineering will always be a perilous endeavour. As our bodies acclimatize to thinner air, decision-making becomes fuzzy, but the goal becomes clear. Summit fever is a real force of nature, as deadly as any blizzard or avalanche or falling serac. And while the Thorung La may not be a true peak, it is a summit nonetheless.

About the Author(s)

Harley Rustad (@hmrustad) is a features editor at The Walrus and author of Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada's Last Great Trees (September 2018).

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